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NASSP Radio Astronomy Practical at HartRAO - 2013-09-02



The Honours class of sixteen students from the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme (NASSP) spent a week at HartRAO in early September, learning about radio astronomy in a hands-on way.

The photos below give the flavour of how the practical was conducted.

NASSP Practical
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
Astronomer Marion West introduced the students to HartRAO, its history, and the astronomy research carried out here.

NASSP
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
The students visiting the 15m radio telescope originally built in 2007 as the first prototype in developing the Karoo Array Telescope (now MeerKAT).

Earth
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
Astronomer Sarah Buchner at left explains the telescope control equipment and signal processing backends in the radio telescope control room.

Earth
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
Students reducing data from the Vela Pulsar recorded with the multi-channel pulsar timer on the 26m radio telescope.

Earth
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
Astronomical coordinate systems! A transparent star globe helped to show how different coordinate systems relate to each other.

Earth
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
The HartRAO hospitality team who kept the students in food and drink and with beds to sleep in are shown above in the HartRAO tearoom awaiting the hungry horde. From the left, Sophie Montwedi, Glenda Coetzer, Samuel Masiteng, Kedibone Montwedi, Joseph Chefu.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
Back to the classroom. PhD student Jabulani Maswanganye, himself a NASSP graduate, told the students about methanol masers and how we do spectroscopy at radio freqeuncies in order to study them.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
Geodesy PhD student Roelf Botha showed the students the Lunar / Satellite Laser Ranger that is in development at HartRAO.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
The students watched the NASA MOBLAS-6 Satellite Laser Ranger measuring the constantly changing distance to a satellite crossing the sky.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
The students were shown the electronic, microwave and mechanical workshops, and mechanical workshop supervisor Andre van der Merwe is seen here explaining the tooling in use.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
The students used a domestic DSTV antenna and radiometer as a simple radio telescope to measure the emission from the Sun at a frequency 12 GHz, from which they later derived the brightness temperature of the Sun at that frequency.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
What size is the Sun? The students measured the angular diameter of the Sun using pinhole projection.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Sarah Buchner / HartRAO
There was time to relax in the evenings - here over a braai. Second from the left is UP MSc student Denise Dale who is doing a project at HartRAO and is herself an ex-NASSP student. She assisted with the braai - and other parts of the practical!

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Sarah Buchner / HartRAO
A highlight of the practical was climbing the 26m telescope and seeing its drive and receiver systems close up.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
Climbing through the structure at the Declination platform.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Sarah Buchner / HartRAO
Taming Brownian motion - getting the group together for a photo.

NASSP
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
Group photo in the dish is achieved!

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Denise Dale / HartRAO
The edge of the 26m dish is a long way above the ground and has to be reached very carefully.

Telkom
Left click on image for large version. Credit: Sarah Buchner / HartRAO
Carefully climbing down the long North ladder on the 26m telescope.